A
team of researchers at MIT are working to make today’s batteries as extinct
as the dodo bird. The researchers have been using acetylene gas to deposit carbon nanotubes onto silicon. The carbon nanotubes are
then able to store as much if not more energy than today’s traditional lead or
lithium batteries, but can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times unlike
current battery technology which fails after a few thousand recharges at best.

The researchers have also tackled the manufacturing hurdle by depositing the
nanotubes on silicon much in the same way current silicon parts are made making
mass production more feasible than in the past. One
major difference, however, is that the nanotube on silicon batteries actually
act more like capacitors then traditional batteries. Capacitors, unlike
batteries store less energy and discharge rapidly however can be recharged
quickly. The team speculates that if they are able to make a large enough
capacitor that it will function much like current batteries do.

Not surprisingly, there are some dissenters to the new
technology. A Researcher from the
University of California at Davis has his doubts about the feasibility of such technology and doesn't see it making any significant inroads on existing
batteries. Boston.com
reports:

Andrew Burke, research
engineer at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of
California at Davis, said that the new capacitors would have to be many times
more powerful than any previously created. "I have a lot of respect for those
guys, but I have not seen any data," Burke said. "Until I see the data,
I'm inclined to be skeptical." Even if Schindall's capacitors work, he
doubts they'll transform the electronics industry overnight. Companies have too
much invested in today's battery systems, and it would take years before carbon
nanotube capacitors could be mass-produced.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

"CNT are a pain in the ass to work with" Of what research do you base that on? Maybe they were 15 years ago, but techniques have gotten much better and understanding of CNTs has advanced quite a bit as well.

The article clearly states that the researchers are still working on it. My point about this skeptic (and skeptics in general) is that they are very quick to point out the negative. It's clear that he has some 'other' motive to make the negative statements.

Peer reviewing is a good thing, no doubt, but current info for this research is not ready for peer review yet. This skeptic jumped the gun. I wondered why, that's all.